Hidden Gems: Meet Collins Ero of TIME AFRICA Network.

Today we’d like to introduce you to Collins Ero.

Hi Collins, thanks for sharing your story with us. To start, maybe you can tell our readers some of your backstory.
I grew up in Lagos, Nigeria. We weren’t rich, but my parents were very intentional about how they raised us. The message was simple: carry yourself with dignity and integrity, no matter what the circumstances look like around you. That stayed with me.
My earliest understanding of “work” wasn’t a job. It was a mission. My late twin brother Chris, my little sister, and I spent the better part of the early 2000s inside Nigeria’s child rights infrastructure. We organized UNICEF’s Global Movement for Children “Say Yes For Children” campaign through the Nigerian Youths AIDS Program and Child-to-Child Network, led HIV/AIDS awareness programs, and I served as Secretary of the Child Technical Committee at the Lagos State AIDS Control Agency under the Governor’s Office. Then in 2004, alongside two other twin friends, Teddy and Terry, we co-founded the Deprived Children Movement — anchored in the UN’s Convention on the Rights of the Child. I was in my late teens and early twenties doing all of this. That’s when I first understood that systems could actually be moved, as long as you didn’t lose your humanity trying to move them.
Losing Chris in 2015 changed something in me that I still don’t have the right words for. When you’ve shared a mission with someone your whole life and they’re suddenly gone, the weight doesn’t disappear. It just shifts entirely onto you. You don’t get to stop.
I arrived in Boston in the winter of 2013 — and I mean winter, nobody warned me adequately about that cold. First job was at Dunkin’ Donuts. I’m not above telling that story. From there I worked in manufacturing with companies like Velcro and GE Aviation, and eventually pivoted into fintech as a Business Systems and Senior Compliance Analyst at Fiserv and Discover Financial Services. That world gave me something I hadn’t expected — precision. Understanding how large institutions actually function from the inside, where the gaps live, and why most of them are one cultural blind spot away from a very costly mistake.
But even while I was navigating corporate America, I was quietly building TIME AFRICA along side my incredible team of cofounders — a media enterprise dedicated to spotlighting AfroNouveau trailblazers across the diaspora and the continent. The “I Am AfroNouveau 100” campaign became something bigger than I originally planned, which is what happens when you build from genuine conviction rather than strategy alone. the Campaign has featured Bozoma Saint John, Trevor Noah, Christine Ntim, Usain Bolt, Robert F Smith, Chimamanda Adichie, Wizkid Lupita Nyong’o etc
I also launched The ALT — a business education and operator development platform for multi-hyphenate professionals. People who’ve spent years being told their range is a problem. I’ve lived that story personally, so I built the platform I wish had existed.
Atlanta is home now. And the work continues.
The through-line across all of it — Lagos to Boston to Atlanta — is the same thing it’s always been. Figure out how the system works, push it toward something better, and make sure the people coming behind you have a cleaner path than the one you had to clear yourself.
That’s the story. Still writing it.
I AM AFRONOUVEAU.

Can you talk to us a bit about the challenges and lessons you’ve learned along the way. Looking back would you say it’s been easy or smooth in retrospect?
Smooth? Nah. Not even close.
I grew up in a compound in Lawanson, Surulere with over 50 tenants sharing two bathrooms. That’s not a metaphor for struggle, that’s just Tuesday. One time our landlord literally removed the roof from our apartment while we were at school and my parents were at work. Just took it off.
You learn very quickly that dignity is something you carry inside you, because nobody is going to hand it to you based on your circumstances.
I dropped out of college three times because we couldn’t afford it. My dad had been unfairly terminated from his job. There were stretches where food was a question mark, not a given. And through all of that, we were still doing advocacy work, still showing up for other people’s children through organizations we’d built, because the mission didn’t pause just because our personal situation was falling apart.
Then the losses came. My little sister. My twin brother Chris in 2015. My dad. All within about a decade. I don’t think people understand what that does to you. Grief doesn’t just take people from you, it rearranges your entire operating system. You wake up one day and the person who understood you without explanation is gone. And the world just keeps moving like it’s supposed to.
When I got to the US, I landed in Boston in winter with very little. I had my cousin’s here who quite frankly life would have been way tougher than it was, my first paycheck came from Dunkin’ Donuts, next was at a Deli Market Basket, and then a banquet attendant. I pivoted into manufacturing. I rebuilt from a place that most people around me had no context for. There’s a particular kind of loneliness in starting over in a country where only few people knows what you’ve already survived.
And even now, building TIME AFRICA and The ALT as a founder, the struggle just changes shape. It doesn’t disappear. Funding is hard. Visibility takes longer than people think. Building something that serves a global community while operating from Atlanta with limited resources requires a kind of stubbornness that looks irrational from the outside.
But I’ll tell you something I remind myself whenever the road gets rough. Sometimes when I start to forget what I’m running toward, I just remind myself what I’m running from. Plus I’ve got a family depending on me, so sleeping on the bicycle isn’t really an option.
The road wasn’t smooth. But it was mine. And every rough patch taught me something I now use to help someone else avoid the same pothole. That’s the deal.

Great, so let’s talk business. Can you tell our readers more about what you do and what you think sets you apart from others?
TIME AFRICA is a global media enterprise spotlighting AfroNouveau trailblazers — the globally minded Africans and members of the diaspora who are quietly (and sometimes loudly) reshaping culture, business, and policy across borders. We exist because the story of Africa and her people has, for too long, been told by everyone except us. We’re fixing that, one trailblazer at a time.
Had our maiden workshop ‘NeXT Up Africa’ in Lagos, which featured captains of industries as well as young professionals.
Our signature initiative is the I Am AfroNouveau 100 campaign, which recognizes 100 individuals each year whose work embodies the AfroNouveau ethos — globally minded, culturally rooted, economically sovereign. . The campaign has drawn recognition from people like Bozoma Saint John, Christine Ntim, and Usain Bolt. But honestly? I’m equally proud of the lesser-known founders, creators, and operators we’ve spotlighted who needed someone to validate that their work mattered. That’s the real win.
I also run The ALT, a business education and operator development platform built specifically for multi-hyphenate professionals. The people who’ve been told their whole life that they need to “pick one thing.” I built The ALT for them because the world needs a generation of operators who can move fluently across industries, identities, and cultures without losing the plot. The ALT teaches the playbook. TIME AFRICA tells the stories of the people running it.
And then there’s PreacherMafioso (Yoso) — my creative identity. The music. The cultural side of me that refuses to live exclusively in boardrooms. Same audience, different doorway in.
What sets us apart?
Most cultural platforms treat African and diaspora identity as either a marketing opportunity or a charity case. We treat it as a market — and the people in it as the protagonists of their own story, not extras in someone else’s. There’s a quiet but important shift happening: people are realizing that culture is not entertainment, it’s economic infrastructure. AfroNouveau is not a vibe. It’s a category. And we’re building the institutions to match.
The other thing that sets us apart is range. I came up through advocacy, then fintech compliance at companies like Fiserv and Discover, then product management, then digital marketing, then music and media. That blend means we don’t just tell stories — we understand how to translate those stories into distribution, regulatory navigation, brand partnerships, and operator opportunity. We speak fluently in three rooms most platforms can only enter one of: the cultural room, the corporate room, and the policy room.
What I’m most proud of, brand-wise?
The fact that AfroNouveau is now a recognized term people use to describe themselves. When someone says “I AM AFRONOUVEAU” without needing me to define it, that’s the win. That’s a movement, not a marketing campaign.
What I want your readers to know:
If you’ve ever felt like you don’t fit neatly into one box — you’re not the problem. The box is. TIME AFRICA exists for the people building between categories. The ALT exists to give them the playbook. And whether you’re an operator, a creator, a parent, a student, or someone in the middle of reinventing yourself for the fourth time — there’s room at this table. We built it that way on purpose.
You can find us at timeafrica.org and follow along at @iamcollinsero
I AM AFRONOUVEAU.

Can you talk to us a bit about happiness and what makes you happy?
Honestly? The small stuff. The kind of stuff that doesn’t make it into a bio.
My two daughters laughing at something only they understand. That’s the top of the list. There’s nothing in any boardroom, on any stage, or inside any plaque that comes close to watching your kids be unapologetically themselves in a world that’s constantly trying to shrink them. My wife, my mother, my nephew, the family I’m responsible for. They’re not the reward for the work. They’re the reason for the work. Big difference.
Music makes me happy. The version of me that exists as PreacherMafioso isn’t a side project. It’s a place where I get to be human first, strategy second. When I’m in the studio, I’m not thinking about KPIs or pipelines. I’m thinking about whether the bar landed and whether my dad, who first put music in my ears in Lagos, would have nodded. That’s a different kind of happiness. It’s quiet. It’s grounded.
I love the moments when somebody I’ve never met sends me a message that says, “I read that thing you wrote, and it changed how I see myself.” That’s not happiness from applause. That’s happiness from purpose. Two very different things. Applause is fuel. Purpose is shelter.
I love conversations that go deeper than they’re supposed to. The kind that start with “how was your week” and end at 2 a.m. talking about ancestry, ambition, and why we’re really doing what we’re doing. I love watching the AfroNouveau community grow into something that no longer needs my voice to validate it. That’s the goal of any real builder. You want the thing to outgrow you.
And I’ll be honest. I love Lagos. Not the postcard version. The real one. The one with chaos and color and aunties shouting prices and music coming from three directions at once. Anytime I’m there, I feel like the version of me that was always going to be okay. Even when nothing made sense.
There’s also a quieter kind of happiness I’ve grown into in my late thirties. The kind that comes from no longer needing to prove anything to anybody. Losing my twin Chris, my little sister, my dad, those losses taught me that happiness isn’t waiting at the end of the goal. It’s available right now, in the people who are still here, in the work you’re privileged to do, in the breath you took without thinking about it.
So yeah, I’m a Founder. I run companies. I speak on stages. But what makes me happy isn’t any of that.
What makes me happy is that I get to be alive, present, useful, and still close enough to my own joy to recognize it when it shows up.
That’s the whole game.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.erocollins.com
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/iamcollinsero/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/RealPreachermafioso/
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/collinsero/
• Twitter: https://x.com/preachermafioso
• Other: https://bio.site/Yoso